


sweet blossom, where is your tree?

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Allison Argent, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Author Derek, Dimension Travel, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-16 03:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3472670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison reaches into her bag and pulls out a paperback copy of <i>Sacrificial</i>. The spine is cracked, some pages dog-eared. "This is my mom's, by the way. She's a big fan. Probably wouldn't be if she knew what you are, but I think we can keep that between us, don't you?"</p><p>Up close, Derek can see the flowers on Allison's arms better—datura, monkshood, oleander. "She's alive?"</p><p>"Well, everybody is, aren't they?" Allison says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet blossom, where is your tree?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainsoakedshoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainsoakedshoes/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tyler Hoechlin poses with "My Girlfriend, The Darach" by clawsfight](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/101024) by teenwolfpostproduction & clawsfight. 



> thanks to Ashe for the beta!

People always like to ask Derek _questions_ in interviews. "Where do you get your ideas? Any real life inspiration for your books?"

Derek usually shrugs and says, "My grandma was really into the _Cat Who…_ series. She used to listen to them on tape a lot." Which is, technically, true.

There's only one person who's ever come out and said, "You know, you _are_ from the town with the second-highest missing person rate in California in 2011. And your uncle—"

"I was in Iowa then," Derek said to him. "For my MFA?"

"Don't be a dick, I'm trying to get a scoop here," said the guy from the _Beacon Hills Gazette_. His dad had been the arresting officer on the case. "Do you know how hard it is to get promoted from social media intern?"

Derek said, "Sorry. I'm not very interesting."

—

Derek doesn't usually bring up his MFA; he's not the kind of writer who gets Pulitzer Prizes or National Book Awards, which is a little embarrassing, considering his classmates. All ten of his thrillers have made it onto the _New York Times_ Bestseller List, though. Derek is particularly fond of _Dark Oak_. He has the cover framed and hanging in the living room and everything.

There are a couple of things Derek doesn't talk about in interviews. How he still lives in his parents' house. The werewolf thing. Oh, yeah, and the dreams.

"I wanna know what the next book is gonna be," Cora says the morning after the _Gazette_ interview. She's home from Eugene for the weekend. "Do you have it started yet?"

Derek's mouth is full of Cream of Wheat, so it takes him a couple seconds to answer. "It's going to be a sequel to _Flashpoint_."

"Ooh, loved that one," Laura's wife Paige says, setting a plate of bacon down on the table.

"I'm bringing Kitty Silver back from the grave." Derek pauses theatrically; Cora pokes him with the sticky end of her spoon. "She's going to hunt down Future Dave and turn him back into a teenager."

"I never should have let you watch _Passions_ with Nanny," says Mom.

—

When he was in high school, around the time Laura and Paige started dating, Derek started having the dreams. Well, nightmares. He used to wake up everyone in the house screaming in the beginning. It's been more than a decade, though, and none of them have come true. Paige is still human, no one's ever tried to burn down their house, and what happened with Uncle Peter and Deucalion was nothing Derek had foreseen. The Argents are a real hunter family, but they're up in Canada; the Hales have had a treaty with the Calaveras down south since Nanny was a kid. 

"Maybe it'll help if you write it down," Dad said when Derek refused to apply to colleges he couldn't commute to. "Give it a try?"

Famous last words.

—

Kate Argent shows up in his dreams a lot. Sometimes her niece does, too. Her name is Alice, or something like that. She's stabbed Cora's best friend Erica, but she's helped rescued Derek a time or two. One time Derek watched her drown in a tub alongside the guy from the _Gazette_ and Deaton's vet tech. She was holding a silver bullet, of course. Derek's dreams, wherever they come from, aren't so different from regular dreams—they're a string of events and vivid details that rarely make any kind of linear sense. 

So Derek's really not expecting it when Alice Argent shows up in Starbucks two weeks after he dreams about her getting run through with a katana.

He's sitting in his usual armchair, laptop on his knees and venti caramel machiatto on the table beside him, when he sees her in line. She has shorter hair than in his dream and floral tattoos that blossom up her forearms. Derek tries not to stare. "What's your name?" says Eric at the register. 

"Allison," she says.

Eric sharpies it on a paper cup with a flourish. "Grande pumpkin spice, coming right up."

Allison pays and then strides over to toss her backpack into the empty seat next to Derek. Which Derek probably should have been expecting. "Don't go anywhere," she says softly. "I haven't had a pumpkin spice latte in a very long time, and I'm going to need one to talk to you."

—

"Maybe you should have this conversation with my mom," Derek says. "And—maybe not in Starbucks."

Allison rolls her eyes. "This is Beacon Hills. You're Bestselling Author Derek Hale. Is this seriously the weirdest conversation anyone has ever heard in here?"

"Well… no."

"Plus, I know you'll believe me. My parents don't." Allison reaches into her bag and pulls out a paperback copy of _Sacrificial_. The spine is cracked, some pages dog-eared. "This is my mom's, by the way. She's a big fan. Probably wouldn't be if she knew what you are, but I think we can keep that between us, don't you?"

Up close, Derek can see the flowers on Allison's arms better—datura, monkshood, oleander. "She's alive?"

"Well, everybody is, aren't they?" Allison says. "Except for my grandfather and my aunt Kate."

"My uncle Peter," Derek says.

Allison gives him this funny, tight smile. "Funny how it's just the bad guys, huh? Weirded me out when I got here."

"What do you mean, you _got here_?" Derek says.

"I'm not this Allison," Allison says, gesturing to her body. "I'm yours."

—

The Allison that Allison's body belongs to is 26 and does u/x for a startup in Toronto. Her company thinks she's finally cashing in her whopping three weeks of accrued vacation days in between product launches. She has a stash of guns and ammunition under her bed, but "a normal amount," whatever that means. 

"I've never handled a gun," Derek confesses.

Allison pats him on the arm. "Of course you haven't. You're—no offense, you're kind of a baby."

This Allison is 18 and she was dead for a while before Derek dreamed about it. She fiddles with the cardboard sleeve on her latte as she drinks it, wearing at the join with her thumb. There's another tattoo on the inside of her wrist, blocky text right beneath a datura stalk, but Derek can't read it at this angle. "I think Lydia was the one who brought me back. Except—" 

" _Lydia's_ real?" Derek says.

"She didn't accept my friend request," Allison says. "But Stiles did."

—

"Oh, ho, ho," G. Stilinski from the _Gazette_ says. He's dedicated to his job, if nothing else—he's in the office on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. "Look who's crawling back to me now, Disappointing Local News Feature."

Allison drops her bag on the floor and takes the seat in front of his desk. There's only the one chair in here—this isn't so much an office as a cubby in the chilly server room—so Derek hovers by the door. "You haven't changed at all," she says. "Where's Scott? Scott McCall?"

"Uh, at home?" Stiles says.

Allison nods. "I couldn't find him on Facebook."

Stiles holds up his left hand, the one with the wedding band. "He took my last name when we got married."

"Huh," Allison says. "That makes sense, he hates his dad. Is he a werewolf?"

"Are you kidding me?" Stiles looks at Derek. "Did you bring me your craziest fan as an apology or something?"

Derek has shifted in front of strangers before, but only for trick-or-treaters of Halloween. He's never told an outsider his secret; he's heard a thousand lectures from Mom about _unless it's an immediate and life-threatening emergency_. Nothing in this room is immediate or threatening their lives, not in this universe. He closes his eyes and lets the shift roll over him, the whole shebang, not just the eyes and teeth. "She's not a fan," Derek says. "They're only books in this universe."

—

Because Derek is made of filial guilt and Allison doesn't have a hotel room, they head back home from Stiles's office after promising to find him a better scoop that Werewolves Are Real or Derek Hale's Boring Life. Derek tries to give Allison directions before they get into their cars, but she waves him off. "I've been there before."

Derek knows the house that Allison has been to. He's dreamed about the sleeping bag in the charred hull of Laura's bedroom where he squatted for a few months after she died; he's dreamed about the shattered glass in the windows, broken during the fire from thermal stress. When he pulls up in the driveway, he sees it layered over the sturdy, sound building that he's known all of his life. But that's nothing new.

Mom is waiting for them on the front steps, a folded newspaper on her lap and a pencil in hand for the crossword. She smiles up at them as they climb out of their cars. "Who's the company?"

Inside, Dad's already setting the table. Derek hangs back and watches his family bustle through the room. He's seen all of them die, a hundred angles on the same scenes. The only person who he knows for sure is alive in Allison's world is himself.

"Don't look so glum, baby bro." Laura nudges his shoulder as she passes. "We won't be too mean to your girlfriend. Way to land a hottie."

"Thanks," Allison says as she comes up behind Laura; her footfalls are almost soundless. "You, too."

Laura turns and holds up her hand for a high five. "Love you already, girl."

—

After dinner, Derek gets Mom and Dad to come into the soundproofed library with him and Allison, his sisters making wide eyes and faux-shocked faces behind Allison's back. "Good luck with the proposal!" Cora whispers just loud enough for Derek's sharp hearing to pick up. He glares at her until she flips him off.

"Allison's from my dreams," Derek says when the door is shut behind them. "They're real. Somewhere else."

Allison's parents might not believe her, but Derek's have lived through a decade and a half of his nightmares and read each one of his books. (Dad red-penned the first few.) Mom gives Allison a long, thoughtful look. "Why are you here, honey? Do you need help getting home?"

"I don't know if I can go home," Allison says. "I guess. Maybe."

—

Afterward, Allison says, "I'm going for a walk," and nods at Derek to follow her. It's full dark under the new moon, but she has a flashlight clipped to her keychain that she turns on to the light the way in front of them. They take the path up from the house into the Preserve, the clear one that'll take them up to the cliff that overlooks town if they stay on it for a mile. 

"You know, I thought for the first couple days that I was in heaven," Allison says after a few minutes. 

Derek steps over a fallen branch. "How do you know it's not?"

Allison snorts. "Have you seen the news lately?" She pauses. "And I don't think we'd remember. You and me."

"I don't _remember_ ," Derek says. "I just—know, that's all. I wasn't there with you. I'm sorry that I couldn't do anything."

"Jesus, shut up with your martyr bullshit," Allison says. "You tried, there. You tried really hard. You're still—you're the same here. We all are, really. I don't know why I was surprised."

The light on the path throws the world around them into a dark contrast that makes it hard for Derek to see ahead, even with his enhanced vision. But he knows these trees and the ground beneath them, the things that live on and in them, constants in both his lives. He doesn't have to be afraid of this dark, of this world, where he's the scariest thing in this gentle wood. There's no dark oak in this Beacon Hills.

They're cresting the hill when Allison says, "It would be really easy to stay here."

"You could," Derek says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
